Diesel drops to lowest share of sales

Car buyers are continuing to turn their backs on diesel in favour of hybrid and electric vehicles, according to a new analysis of online used car sales.

In the latest figures from specialist online car supermarket BuyaCar.co.uk, diesel took its lowest ever share of sales in August, at just 30 per cent.

While petrol continues to dominate the fuel type choices of BuyaCar customers, the biggest growth in market share came from hybrid and battery electric cars in August.

Compared with August 2020, hybrid sales grew by 68 per cent and electric vehicles (EVs) by 47 per cent.

However, even as interest in diesel cars wanes, a significant number of drivers are still being won over by the running cost benefits of diesel over time.

This means that more people buy a diesel on BuyaCar.co.uk than originally intended to - despite diesels costing typically more, on average, than a petrol car.

It is among older cars that diesel maintains its strongest market share, but even here the reduction is stark over the past 12 months.

In August 2020 diesel took up to 48 per cent of all sales among cars aged four to six years old.

But for cars between one and three years old the figure ranged between 25 per cent and 28 per cent.

In contrast, August this year saw diesel fall as low as 16 per cent of sales for three-year-old cars while only among five and six-year-old cars did diesel account for more than 4 per cent of sales.

"One of the surprises in our figures is that more people end up buying a diesel than initially planned to," said Christofer Lloyd, editor of BuyaCar.co.uk. "For example, in August the proportion of searches for a diesel car was just under 22 per cent and yet diesels formed 30 per cent of our sales.”